Mike Elias is keeping busy before the winter meetings, adding two players in one day.
The Orioles have scratched off two of their bigger offseason needs in one night on Saturday night. Following on the heels of the reported signing of outfielder Tyler O’Neill to a contract, the O’s also moved on and reached a deal with catcher Gary Sánchez, according to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. Like O’Neill’s deal, Sánchez’s is still unofficial pending a physical. The contract will guarantee $8.5 million, Heyman reported.
This is not the most exciting move that the Orioles will make over the offseason. It’s not even the most high-potential move that they’ve had reported today. It’s something they needed to do all the same now that James McCann, the backup catcher for the last two seasons, has hit free agency.
In Sánchez, the O’s have a player with almost 600 career starts at the catcher spot who’s proven himself capable of bearing about a 50/50 workload over his time in the league. If what happened to Adley Rutschman in 2024 really was normal wear and tear, they need a guy who can catch 70 games or so and not do a bad job of it.
Can Sánchez be that guy? In 2024, he batted .220/.307/.392 across 280 plate appearances, slightly better than what McCann was doing with the O’s, if still not exciting. At least according to the Statcast metrics, he was about average at every aspect of catcher defense except for blocking pitches, at which he’s pretty bad.
In his younger days, Sánchez brought some real power to the table, hitting over 30 homers with the Yankees in both 2017 and 2019. That was a long time ago and he’s bounced to the Twins, Mets, Padres, and Brewers since then. Now he’ll be an Oriole in 2025, as long as he passes the physical. He’s almost certainly better than Rene Pinto, who would have been headed for the backup catching job if nothing else happened. It probably won’t hurt to have the new Walltimore dimensions for 2025 for this player either.
The biggest need of starting pitching is still to be addressed. The Orioles have now added $25 million in payroll for 2025 between the signings of O’Neill and Sánchez. You can be optimistic that the flood gate is open now and there is more to come, or you can wonder if this is the money there was to spend and so nothing will happen at either the top- or even second-tier of the free agent pitching market involving the Orioles.